Human Footprint Review

Yesterday I had a chance to watch the National Geographic program Human Footprint. The idea was interesting and tied into a line of interest I've been exploring: a visual representation of what an American (not a Human) consumes during their average lifetime of 77 years and some odd months.

It follows the life time of a boy and girl, showing what they consume during their entire life at various times in their life. For example, it starts out showing you what raw materials go into make diapers and then how many diapers a child will wear in their lifetime. It's pretty overwhelming and at this point I began wondering if they would then compare other, less wasteful methods to these seemingly wasteful methods. They mention washing cloth diapers and then tell you how much water you use for washing, and nothing else.

At this point I started getting a little confused about what the real message of the movie was. Should we stop wasting? What should we use instead of disposable or cloth diapers? What is an acceptable level of usage? They continue on displaying the total number of various food items you will consume over the average lifespan, but it left me wondering what I should be eating instead of meat, eggs, bread, diary and fruits. I didn't really know what some of the numbers meant and even for someone like me that likes numbers, my eyes kinda glazed over. They overwhelmed you by actually showing you what you consumed ( like the 55 loaves a bread you'll eat each year). It left me wondering what they did with all of those loaves of bread they spread all over the ground to allow me to visualize how many loaves I will consume in my life (they didn't waste them, did they?), meanwhile causing me to ask which bread-like items I consume are included in these numbers. Only real loaves? Rolls? Buns? Croissants? Do these numbers include what people buy or what they actually do use themselves? I don't even know what they movie is trying to say anymore except to overwhelm you massive numbers of things.

I think after seeing Manufactured Landscapes recently, the attempts at using the same imagery of a super close up to a long panning shot to show me plastic ducks representing showers was a little boring. That isn't to say nothing in this movie was interesting. At one point I was completely disgusted to see that maraschino cherries are bleached before being dyed red. They stated that the average American drinks 43,371 cans of soda in their lifetime. That is 556 sodas a year for all 77 years and 8 (or something) months of one's life from birth. That is about 1.5 sodas a day and there are people like me that rarely drink soda. The average American reads 6 books a year.

Eventually, towards the end, they remind you to do things like turn off your lights and unplug appliances and other tips. For the first time my thought that this show has some point appears, but I still wasn't sure what to make of the beginning. I don't know if they wanted to say "hey stop having children" or "eat more vegetables".

It wasn't that the information isn't potentially useful, but the way it is displayed it is difficult to reach many conclusions. I think it would have been better in small parts than as 1 long 90 minute show on dvd. Watched in one stretch it just became overwhelming and lost some of the impact. I wish they explained where these numbers came from because while they were impressive, it sometimes reminded me of the information that comes to you in quick tv news segments or online news stories. It makes a big impact, but taken completely out of context has no meaning.